


That Others May Live

by dentigerous, superhumandisasters



Category: Marvel 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Action, Action/Adventure, Captain America Reverse Big Bang 2017, Gen, Military Backstory, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Sam Wilson is a Gift
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-19
Updated: 2017-06-29
Packaged: 2018-11-11 11:27:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 15,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11147463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dentigerous/pseuds/dentigerous, https://archiveofourown.org/users/superhumandisasters/pseuds/superhumandisasters
Summary: What happened to Sam Wilson in the war? A story that goes in and out of the past through flashbacks, therapy sessions, and Sam's emotions.





	1. “You were a soldier.”

**Author's Note:**

> A great big thank you to my artist, Superhumandisasters! [You can find her art here, and it's all really amazing.](https://superhumandisasters.tumblr.com/) Major kudos to her for drawing such an amazing piece for the RBB. 
> 
> A few specific shout outs to iamagentcoop and eyesofshinigami for their support! I met them in the RBB slack and they're great writers and friends. 
> 
> Thanks to the RBB mods, it was a great bang and super clear. I will be back.

 

“How does your body feel today?”

Sam Wilson raised his eyebrows, looking down at his hands. He shifted in the comfortable chair and took another deep breath before glancing at his therapist.

“Uh...alright, I guess. Sore. I had a long run.”

“Good. And your sleeping schedule?”

“I got it all down in the journal, doc.” Sam gestured to the small notebook on the table by Dr. Masi. “Hours, meals, mood, all of it.”

Masi smiled and nodded, tapping her pen on the top of her legal pad. Sam liked that she had Bic pens with toothmarks on the caps, that she used college-ruled yellow legal pads, kept her frizzy black hair pulled back into two buns that reminded him of his cousin. She seemed like a real person rather than someone who was being paid to evaluate his mental health.

“Promise?”

“Scout’s honor.”

Masi chuckled and sat back, crossing her legs. “You want to get right to it, huh?”

“You want some coffee?” Sam asked, standing up and going over to the Keurig machine on the snack table.

“I have a fresh cup, thanks.”

Sam nodded, distracting himself. He fumbled with the pods and found a VA mug that looked pretty clean. He sat down with the mug, staring at his coffee.

“How about this session we take a break from your time in the service,” Masi said, reaching for her own mug. “What was growing up like?”

Sam pressed his mouth, taking a sip of the coffee and wincing. He ran a hand over his head and looked up at Masi, who smiled a little, eyebrows up.

“It was tough, you know. Dad was a pastor, mom was a teacher, we lived in Harlem.”

“You were poor.”

“Yeah, three kids, low income family, it wasn’t easy.”

“You had a good childhood?”

“Oh, yeah.” Sam frowned and nodded, taking another sip of his coffee. “Yeah, you know, they did a good job. Dad was…” He paused and then shook his head, taking a deep breath. “Dad came off as a hard ass, but he was good, you know, just...the best kind of man.”

“Tell me more about him.”

Sam chuckled and looked up, sitting back in his chair.

“The Reverend Paul Wilson,” he murmured, carefully sorting through memories like proverbs. How do you describe the man who formed you? Made you? Sam had created a strange paragon around the memory of his father, built up sacred walls like a church around his image.

“What about your first memory?” Masi asked after a few minutes, still smiling slightly. “What’s your earliest memory of your dad?”

Sam was quiet for a minute. He took another deep breath and shifted in the chair, taking another sip of the coffee.

“Sam?”

“I’m thinking, Doc.”

Masi sat back, patient.

“I was in church,” Sam started, frowning a little. “Five, maybe four. Sitting next to Deon. Ma next to him, holding Sarah. Dad up there preaching. Can’t remember what about, honestly, but looking up there, watching him.”

“Is there anything else?”

Sam tilted his head, pressing his mouth as he thought. “No...No, I just...It was only a bit of it. I remember I was wearing black, Deon was in red, Ma was wearing a purple dress, with white and blue flowers. I remember it was...summer, hot.” He didn’t have the right words for it, the smell of Harlem’s burning tar that floated into the church halls, the soft flutter of wing-like fans, the way that the church was never really silent, never really still, where church was a moving, breathing thing. “I barely remember it. But that’s the first memory I have of my father. Watching him preach.”

“The church was a big part of your life.”

“That’s right.”

“Is it still a big part of it?”

Sam shook his head, still frowning. He looked down at the standard-issue gray carpeting and took a deep breath. It was hard to describe how big it was, how it loomed over him like a cathedral’s arch ceilings “No. No, actually…”

Here, this was the sensitive part. This was where the wound still felt fresh, as if he had burning stigmata on his hands, blood dripping on the floor. He was whole, the marks became medals, but his hands still weren’t clean, the blood wasn’t his. He closed his eyes, leaning over his hands. He couldn’t feel the heat of the mug, it became something more raw, something dark and silent and expansive. It swallowed him whole for a few seconds, and he let it, didn’t fight back to the surface.

“Sam?”

“I’m alright.” Sam shifted again, blinking. “My parents, when I was fifteen, wanted me to join the church. Confirmation, seminary track like Deon, all of it. I couldn’t. I couldn’t do it.”

“What stopped you?” Doctor Masi asked, her voice quiet.

“Me. I thought I knew everything already. I thought my parents were ignorant.” Sam sat up again, chewing on the inside of his cheek for a second before shaking his head. “We were growing up in Harlem, not the nice parts, and my friends...” He paused, thinking. “I had friends getting killed, OD’ing, gang banging daily. It wasn’t easy, and faith seemed pointless. Even my father’s church was struggling. Faith didn’t seem to do nothing. ”

“What did you do?”

“I told them,” Sam said, voice tight. “I told my parents. I looked Reverend Wilson right in his eyes, and I told him I thought his life’s work was shit.”

Doctor Masi’s expression never wavered. She nodded once, an encouragement.

“The next day,” Sam pressed his mouth and then looked away. “They gave me a Quran. And a set of the Jewish books; the Torah and the Talmud. Copies of the Vedas and Upanishads, the teachings of Confucius, the Buddhist books...the Tripitakas. A few others. All the different holy books. They did that. Left them in my room, an invitation. They were the best kind of people. Only wanted me to understand that faith was...something universal, that God is an ideal and not an idol, that service is ingrained in humanity.”

“Wow,” Masi’s eyebrows went up. “That’s impressive, I think.”

“Yeah, yeah, I...didn’t expect it. I felt like a damn fool sitting on my bed with these books of faith and service and I just...” Sam shook his head again, frowning deeply. “I couldn’t become a pastor, but I could serve, you know? That was still something I could do.”

“How did your parents deal with that?”

Sam took a deep breath, taking another deep breath, running his hand over his head. “My dad...he was killed a few months after that, never got to see it happen. Mom was proud. Every time I got promoted or went back into training, she was supportive. I was making a life, I was dedicated. I wasn’t serving the Lord--” Sam broke off, chuckled, and shook his head. “But I was serving.”

“Do you feel like your service honored your father’s memory?”

The tone had shifted a little. Sam knew that he had to work through a lot of the trauma that surrounded his time in the military, but his home life had been relatively stable. Dealing with his father’s death had been hard, but he had Gideon, Sarah, his mom all around him. The parish had rallied around the Wilsons, brought food over for almost a year, made sure Darlene was taken care of.

Sam nodded. “Yeah, I couldn’t do much else. I had to.”

“Why did you have to?”

“I had to.” This was a fact. It was immutable, it was a pillar, it was a pew, it was a pulpit. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “Deon is a pastor. Sarah is a nurse. I’m a soldier.”

“You were a soldier.”

“I was a soldier,” Sam repeated, voice tight. It took a second before he realized that he was completely tense. He forced his shoulders to loosen, he put his mug down, he took a deep breath. Dr. Masi didn’t say anything as he counted to ten in his head, sucked in his cheeks and then looked up at her.

“I was a soldier.”

“You okay with that?” Masi’s voice was soft, understanding.

“No.”

Sam closed his eyes, dropping his head. His answer had come too fast, had been too natural. He would always be a soldier. He had started JROTC in high school, enlisted, fought, trained, flown, fallen. It was still him, it was in him, a part of him, a pew, a pulpit, a preacher.

“You need to find a way to serve others.”

“You want me to be a waiter?” Sam’s jaw tensed and he shook his head. “Sorry.”

Masi didn’t rise to the snap reaction. She smiled and gestured, brushing the sarcastic remark aside. “How about a soup kitchen? Just to start.”

Sam took a deep breath and nodded, running his hand over his mouth.

“Yeah, I could do that.”

“Just to start.”


	2. “That’s a terrible plan.”

 

“Psst.”

Airman Sam Wilson, in the middle of studying for (yet another) test at Lackland AFB, refused to be swayed. His neighbor in the library, a dun-haired man who looked like he came out of an ad for _Farmer’s Digest,_ had been trying to get his attention for nearly ten minutes. Sam kept his eyes firmly downward.

Farm boy waited maybe ten seconds before leaning over the table, eyes wide and earnest.

“Hey.”

Sam glanced at the man, eyebrows up. “What?”

“Can you help me?”

“I’m trying to study,” Sam whispered, obviously trying to convey to the other PJ-hopeful that he should also be quiet.

“Me too.” Farm boy was undaunted. He glanced around, and then walked around the table, sitting next to Sam. It was all the Harlem native could do to not smack this man upside the head. “I need help. Can you explain this protocol?”

Sam took a deep breath and nodded, pulling the binder towards him. “There’s an appendix you’re missing. Here.” He flipped through to the correct page, pointing to the addendum. Farm boy’s eyes widened and he sat back. He nodded and smiled at Sam.

“Thanks, I’m Riley.”

“Sam.” Hell with it. Maybe having a friend wouldn’t be so bad.

* * *

There’s no easy way to join the Air Force. It’s even harder to become a Para Jumper. There are only two hundred positions available in Pararescue, and only about one hundred and fifty active Pararescuemen in the service. Out of every hundred people who express an interest in becoming a AF rescumean, only three ever get to wear the maroon beret of the PJ’s.

There are benchmarks before anyone can even apply to the program. First, potential PJs must pass in the 90th percentile of a test similar to the SAT. Then, they have to prove their physical fitness not once, but twice, taking the physical aptitude test back to back.

The extensive training regimen to be a pararescue is called the pipeline. Applicants spend two years in the pipeline before they can apply to become a PJ. Two years of certifications, classes, physical training, flight school, indoctrination, medical training and survival skills and you still have submit a paper with your name, rank, and recommendations.

It takes less than four months to become a Marine.

It’s brutal, it’s gruelling, but the Pararescue Airmen who make it to the end of the pipeline come out as the most elite, well-rounded, skilled members of the US Military. They have to be able to give aid, go behind enemy lines alone and come back with their mission, be experts in tactics, weapons, hand-to-hand combat, flying, strategy, and espionage.

It is not easy, but Sam Wilson didn’t join the military to take it easy.

* * *

Riley Monroe turned out to be almost exactly who Sam had thought he was. He was a Minnesota boy, born and raised. He worked on his father’s farm his whole life, dropped out of school to help out, got his GSD, and shipped himself off to basic training the minute he turned eighteen.

Turns out farm life was good for something. Riley could run faster than Sam even on his worst day. It was good. A challenge.

“What’s this?” Sam was confused. He had just finished the nine-week indoc course and had been handed a letter of stay from his CO. He frowned and followed the officer.

“Sir, I have some questions--”

“You’ll get answers later, Airman. Unpack your bags.”

Sam watched the officer go and turned back to his bunk, tossing his rucksack back on the mattress. He wasn’t angry, just confused. He had passed indoc--passed with flying colors. He twisted his mouth, sighed through his nose, and sat down on his bunk, reaching to grab a binder. SERE was next on the docket, at least that’s what he thought. He’d get a week off, and then two and a half in a survival course.

At least he could study.

“Hey!” Riley sat down next to him, grinning. He passed a letter over to Sam. “What the fuck is this huh? You know something about this?”

Sam frowned, looking over the same letter that he had just been handed, but addressed to Airman Riley Monroe. He shook his head. “No clue. I got the same one.”

“No shit? Man, there are a few of us.”

Sam looked up at Riley, who shrugged. “I know Marco, Woods, and Rapp got ‘em too.”

“Graham Marco?” Sam shook his head. “No accounting for taste, huh?”

“Man, we don’t know what the fuck this is.”

Sam shook his head again, frowning. There were instructions on the letter to meet at regulation wakeup (6 am) with the rest of the selected group. He took a deep breath and shrugged.

“We’re going to be marching more.”

“I’m tired of marching,” Riley complained, making a face at the ceiling.

Sam chuckled, shaking his head, “You’re in the wrong profession, Monroe.”

“Fuck,” Riley groaned, standing up and snatching his letter.

“You ain’t got room to be sorry about it!” Sam smiled up at Riley, teasing. “You volunteered for this!”

Riley groaned again, louder and more theatrical as he left Sam alone on his bunk. Sam looked over his own letter, confused. Selected for what?

The next morning, thirty young airmen lined up on grounds. Six were told to leave immediately, and the remaining airmen were ordered to report to medical for an additional check up.

They didn’t get a routine physical. Most of the tests that were taken measured specific physical capabilities. They had EKGs and ECGs, lung capacity assessments, pressure sensitivity, and another three running and endurance evaluations.

By the end of the day, twenty two men were left.

“Hey.” Riley sat down across from Sam in the mess hall and immediately leaned over his tray, eyebrows up. “You notice something weird about all of us?”

“We’re still here.”

“No, man,” Riley said, smiling. “We’re all just about the same. I mean, height, weight, we’d all be in the same wrestling class, right?”

Sam glanced around the mess hall, looking over the frames and set of the men that were left, all sitting in small cliques. Many were already friendly, or at least had done some other parts of the pipeline together. Verona and Westin had met during indoc, just like him and Riley. He took a deep breath, shaking his head. Riley was right. All of them were about the same size and height. It didn’t make too much sense; there were other airmen who were taller, stronger, faster, but everyone in the mess hall was five ten, broad shouldered, long legged.

“I guess. Don’t see why that would matter much.”

“I don’t either!” Riley groaned, sitting back.

“Yeah, you keep thinking,” Sam huffed, reaching across the table and taking the brownie from Riley’s tray. “I’m just here to eat and follow orders.”

Riley looked put out by the theft, but didn’t respond, crossing his arms. “Look, man, I think it means something. Just wait.”

“We ain’t got shit else to do.”

* * *

At the end of the two weeks of testing, additional training, measuring and flight sims, fourteen Airmen were put on the ‘Falcon Track’, including Sam and Riley. They continued through the pipeline, and at the very end of the year and a half, there were eight men who met at Lackland AFB. They were all given Top Security clearance before they got another briefing.

Sam and Riley were sitting in back, their desks and heads pushed together as they waited.

“Man, we still don’t know what the fuck this Falcon shit is.”

“I call Peregrine,” Sam smirked, arms crossed, head tilted up. “You can be Merlin.”

“Merlin isn’t a falcon,” Riley muttered, rolling his eyes.

“Sure is,”

“Shit, you’re right,” Riley groaned and then laughed, “let me think. A Gyrfalcon! I’ll be that one.”

“That’s lame ass shit,” Sam laughed, grinning over at Riley.

Riley made a noise, shifting in his chair. “I take it back, Merlin ain’t bad after all.”

“Airmen!” Three dressed men came through the doors. The one Air Force uniform saluted and then indicated that all the men in the room stay in their chairs. Sam, Riley, and the rest of the Airmen sat up a little straighter.

Riley leaned over, whispering, “Is this our execution squad?”

“Ain’t funny, man.”

The three men spread out in the front of the classroom. The AF Colonel crossed his arms, leg spread as he looked over the airmen. The man in a suit who certainly looked like he belonged behind a desk was far more appraising, taking his time to look over each man, his gaze resting on the shoulders, arms, necks of each soldier in turn. The camp’s governor made a noise and nodded, leaning against the desk.

The colonel responded to the governor, then gestured at the group of airmen, taking the lead as the suit continued to look over them. Riley glanced at Sam who shook his head just barely, trying to dissuade Riley from making a sharp remark.

“You have all been kept in the dark for the past sixteen months. Each of you have proved your strength, skill, intelligence and aptitude countless times, and it’s time to reveal that in addition to being fully certified Pararescue soldiers, are now a part of the experimental EXO-7 Falcon program.”

“EXO-7?” Sam glanced at Riley, confused.

“Sounds like exoskeleton,” his friend said, shrugging and looking back at the Colonel.

“In a few days this platoon will head to Edwards and we will continue to work with you. You will be a specialized unit of super-pararescuemen, equipped with technology that will allow you to fly at speeds exceeding two hundred and fifty miles per hour, avoid any stealth-seeking radar technology, and give you the ability to execute search and rescue missions we previously deemed too risky to take on.”

“Yes, thank you Colonel Guerra.” The suit stepped forward now, smiling a little. “This project is still under development, of course. Top secret stuff.” He chuckled, and then looked crestfallen when nobody else caught the joke. He made a noise in the back of his throat, smiled again, and continued.

“We’ll be taking you to California soon, and we’re excited to see what kind of value you’ll bring to the project. It’s a specialized technology that will need individual adjustment and require a level of teamwork that is not...usually required.”

“You will be set into flight pairs,” the colonel continued. “You will be training exclusively with your partner, as the EXO-7 missions and execution will require two of you in the field.” He gestured towards the camp’s head, who had been overseeing the Falcon participants for the past three months. “We have some recommendations from the Major, but if any of you have any requests...We ask for your suggestions when we arrive at Edwards.”

“That’s gotta be a first, huh?” Riley whispered, smiling.

“Yeah, a CO asking for your opinion? Someone call the press.” Sam murmured.

“You do that and we’ll never get to see what kind of tech is going to let us fly at two hundred miles a-fuckin-hour.”

* * *

Two weeks later, Sam and Riley were being measured for a fifth time and strapped with special body armor; structured pads on their knees, elbows, kevlar-cut reinforcements around their ankles, hips and ribcage, chest plates and something that resembled pauldrons on their shoulders that turned out to be joint reinforcers. They didn’t have to ask to be partnered together, the Lackland Major had already recommended them for a pair.

They were standing outside, the California heat making them sweat through their heavy clothing and body armor. Sam spread his legs a little, accommodating the engineer tech who was putting all the gear on him. He pressed his mouth, still annoyed that he hadn’t been able to get a straight answer out of anyone.

Sam looked up at Riley, who was grinning like a fool. He raised his eyebrows and Riley laughed aloud. One of the engineers made a noise and tweaked a strap.

“Relax or I could destroy your diaphragm.”

“Sorry,” Riley said quickly, still grinning.

“You going to get yourself killed on day one,” Sam muttered, rolling his eyes.

“No, man, I have you to look out for me.”

“That’s a terrible plan.”

Riley pouted for a few seconds, just about to respond, when suddenly he and Sam were both distracted by a pair of tech gurneys rolled out.

“Stark Tech? Hammer?” Sam frowned, looking over the large metal backpacks. Next to him Riley shook his head.

The backpacks were strapped on, secured, and then turned on. All the weight that had been put on Sam’s body seemed lighter, as if the bands and reinforcements had distributed the weight differently. He bounced a little on his toes, impressed by how different this felt. Carrying packs around was one thing, this felt as if his entire frame had been tuned up by an expert mechanic. He turned first to the left and then the right, and Riley started going through the same stretches.

Ahead of them, Colonel Guerra and the suit, who had introduced himself as Mister Belanger, walked forward. Guerra had a frown on his face that Sam would be willing to bet was permanent, and Belanger seemed the opposite, always smiling in a way that made Sam feel deeply uncomfortable. He took a deep breath and glanced at Riley, who looked suddenly serious.

Sam swallowed and saluted as the two men approached, Riley only a half second behind him.

“At ease soldiers,” Guerra barked. He gestured, and the engineer techs stepped forward and gave each of the soldiers bracers that fit around their forearms perfectly. “Stand on your marks.”

Sam glanced down and realized that he was about six feet away from a red ‘X’ on the ground. Both he and Riley went over to their separate marks. The techs handed them goggles and Sam put his on. Ten feet away, and he could still hear Riley’s breathy ‘oh, this is fucking cool’. Sam grinned and adjusted his goggles, looking up at Guerra and Belanger.

Belanger smirked, spreading his hands. “You are now wearing the Falcon. Gentleman, please turn on your tech using the thumbprint scanner on your bracer.”

Sam and Riley pressed their right thumbs to the small rectangle on the insides of their left wrists. The computer inside the bracers whirred and then accepted their fingerprints.

“These flight suits and backpacks will only respond to your signature,” Belanger said, tilting his head up. “You have reviewed the shorthand schematics, but I’m told that Colonel Guerra wants to give you hands-on experience. Says you boys learn better on the fly, as it were.” He chuckled at his own joke as Sam and Riley stayed silent.

Belanger gestured again, “Please, gentlemen. Shrug your shoulders, activate your packs by bringing your arms up, twisting your forearms, pulling them towards your chest, and pressing down on the small sensors in your gloves.”

The two airmen glanced at each other and then did as Belanger asked.

“Holy fuck!”

Although Sam didn’t say anything, he heartily agreed, his eyes wide behind the yellow-tinted goggles. He had felt the shift in the tech behind him, but until he looked over at Riley and saw that the other man had a literal wingspan. Sam took a deep breath and spread his arms as well, and the bracers attached to the wings with a shift and a click.

“Excellent work,” Belanger said appraisingly, smiling. Beside him, Colonel Guerra nodded, looking at the wings on the two airmen.

There was some pressure there, and Sam crouched a little, looking up.

“Ah, ah, ah, Mister Wilson, Airman, you don’t want to-”

Sam wouldn’t be able to tell anyone whether he heard Belanger or if he was just ignoring him, but he jumped off the ground and turned his wrists out, shooting upwards, taking flight in the sedate air currents above California. He heard a distant whoop behind him, but didn’t look down.

Samuel Thomas Wilson had learned about the mechanics of flight patterns, bird movements, studied planes and air currents, but all that learning and knowledge fell away from him the further he flew up in the atmosphere. The chill had no effect, the sun seemed brighter, his entire world spread before him. He took a deep breath and knew that he was made for this. He laughed and turned, arms spread, flying.

There was tugging along his shoulder blades, his arms turned out, strapped against the wings. He moved his shoulders and the kevlar straps responded to the pack, turning him to the side. The sun blinded him for a second and he realized he was staring up at the blue expanse of sky ahead. Taking a deep breath, he realized that he was almost hovering, gliding along the air currents that his wings identified and latched onto like a magnet.

Flying. He turned and twisted his arms and engaged the jets to hover in mid air, looking down as Riley shot up past him, laughing so loud he could hear it even over the wind rushing past his ears, over the low rumble-roar of the jetpacks. He turned and he was an angel, he was something out of a dream.

Riley dipped, came back again, hollering as he flew in front of where Sam was alight, his wings tucked against his body as he shot forward. Sam couldn’t resist the thrill of it, and he brought his arms down and back, the wings sliding down with almost no friction as he followed Riley’s lead.

It was beyond imagining, and he and Riley passed each other, twisting out of the way. The movements of their legs changed their direction, their shoulders the set of the wings, the curve of the spine the speed. It was as if his body were tuned into the very air around them, and the wings responded to lift and lead them higher and higher.

Sam shook his head, grinning. He heard static in his ear and the voice of Colonel Guerra ordering him, calmly, to come back down to earth. He sighed and did a few more spins and curlicues on his way down, riding the slow air like a raptor.


	3. “It wasn’t good anymore.”

“Sam?”

The voice sounded as if someone was balling paper in another room. His mouth felt dry, and he felt the sand and grit under his clothing, behind his neck. He knew that he was in the Middle East (location undisclosed, redacted, confidential) that he was in the air. He frowned and remembered the sticky feeling around his eyes from when the sweat stuck to the rubber suction of his goggles. 

Swallowing, he turned, the wings responding to just the slightest twist of his shoulders, as if they were part of him, flesh and blood and bone, something consecrated and holy. 

Were not all God’s creatures holy? 

“Sam.”

Drink water, drive on. 

Sam blinked and looked up at Dr. Demelza Masi and raised his eyebrows. He turned the mug around in his hands and smiled at her before he took a sip of his coffee. 

“Just got a little lost in my head, doc.”

“What were you thinking about?” Masi’s voice was soft, low, and kind. 

Sam licked his lips and shook his head, shrugging. He knew that if he said nothing, Masi would press for more information. It still didn’t make him want to tell her the truth. 

“Flying,” he responded, smiling a little. “I think I miss that the most. It was everything...anyone ever wanted to do. Since before planes, everyone always looked up.”

“It was a big part of your identity.”

“It still is,” Sam said, taking another deep breath. “I dedicated most of my adult life to flying; it’s what I know. I was good at it.”

“Would you go back?” Masi asked, writing on her pad. 

Sam shook his head. He didn’t hesitate at all. “No. No, I miss flying, I miss the air, I miss having wings, but-” Sam was suddenly grateful that his slip up wasn’t too strange, that there wouldn’t be any inquiries into this, that he wouldn’t be brought up for violating his security contracts. “I can’t go back. It’s not...That’s not me anymore.”

“Have you thought about going after your commercial license?”

“Wouldn’t be the same,” Sam said, shaking his head again. He took a deep breath and rolled his shoulders, taking another sip of the coffee. “I can’t get my wings back.”

“Even though it’s a part of you.” Masi asked quietly, taking the phrase as a metaphor when Sam meant it as a lament. 

“Ain’t a part I need.” 

Masi smiled a little, tilting her head to the side. “You believe that?”

“I got to believe it.”

“I don’t think rejecting this part of you is a good idea,” Masi said, smiling a little. It was a challenge, almost, a statement that demanded action. Sam took a second, shifting, thinking about how to respond.

It wasn’t a good idea. He turned away from the military, he’d been fighting to reject his commitments and promises for a long time. This was the part that was still attached to Riley, to the entire Falcon program. He took another sip of his coffee, winced as he drank something that resembled mud, and shook his head. 

“I think it is. I don’t want that anymore.”

“What do you want?”

Sam took a deep breath, shaking his head. He ran his hand over his head and tried to concentrate on the feeling of the warm mug against his palm, the heaviness in his shoulders, the way that he set his boots on the floor and steadied himself. These were grounding techniques, but Sam Wilson was a Falcon. 

He fell forward again, imagining what he wanted. 

“Sam.” Masi didn’t let him drift. Sam glanced up at her and she nodded again. “Can you answer my question?”

“Ain’t a short story, doc.”

“We got time.”

“I want Riley back. I want to go back and save him,” Sam said, eyebrows up. “But who doesn’t want to save people? I just...I wish things had been different, I wish things could be different now. I wish I had flown better, that I had…” he struggled for words, closing his eyes.

“Those are all normal.” 

“I know that,” Sam said, his voice soft.

“But it doesn’t sound like you’ve accepted it.”

Shit, that phrase made Sam’s skin crawl. He shook his head, frowning. “I’m having a hard time with it. My part. I know that I can’t change the past, can’t make decisions over, and I’m satisfied with what I did. Joining up, training, becoming a PJ. All that was good. It felt good, it did good.”

“And after Riley died?”

“It wasn’t good anymore.” 

Masi sat back, tapping the top of her pen against the pad, her eyebrows up. “No?”

“It wasn’t worth it. Riley gone, it felt like...death wasn’t worth it. I didn’t know what kind of service I was doing, what kind of life I had built around being a pararescue. I couldn’t even rescue my friend. I finished the mission, but I couldn’t save Riley.”

“And now there are no more missions,” Masi said quietly.

“Yeah, and I don’t know what to do with myself,” Sam laughed, shaking his head. “Can’t even save my own ass.”

“You know that’s not what this is about.”

“It should be. Right? Teaching me what to do with myself, getting me some new kind of purpose?” Sam looked up at her, and this time he was the one with the challenge. 

“That’s up to you.” Masi’s voice was sterner now, more authoritative. Sam backed down from the challenge, shifting in the chair. He liked Masi, she was kind, and he felt like she was trying to help him, he felt like she genuinely cared. 

Instead of snapping at her, he nodded. “I’m trying to figure it out.”

“What have you been trying?” 

“Just building a life. Running in the mornings, cooking for myself, talking to my siblings.” He took a deep breath. “The military is all I know--”

“Mister Wilson, let’s focus on what you want to do in the future, not what you’ve done in the past.”

Sam’s mouth snapped shut, and he sat back, eyebrows up. It was possibly the most confrontational thing Masi had ever said to him, and he wasn’t sure that he liked it. In fairness, he wasn’t entirely sure that he disliked it either.

“Are you applying to jobs? Have you visited your family? Are you volunteering?” Masi pressed Sam, her voice very even as she asked these questions. 

“I’m working with the VA to get placed,” Sam said, crossing his arms. 

“That sounds passive, Sam.” 

The silence snapped between them. She had a point, and Sam wasn’t arrogant enough to ignore subtle advice when it was given. He pressed his mouth and shrugged his shoulders, looking down at his knees. 

Taking a deep breath, Sam nodded, “Yeah, I’ll work on that.”

“Your work can still have value. You can still contribute.” Masi spoke kindly, setting aside her pad and sticking her pencil behind her ear, held in place by her hair. Sam watched her and nodded again, still not looking up to meet Masi’s gaze. 

“Thanks, doc.”

Masi smiled, turning her head slightly. “You are reason enough, Sam. You’re the reason to keep going, and try hard, and find what serves you. Life isn’t some kind of sentence, and once you work through why you feel trapped here I think you’ll be able to make yourself happy.” Sam’s shoulders hunched and he felt completely exposed. It wasn’t as if Masi was saying anything new, but it hurt to hear it laid so plainly in front of him. Shifting in the chair he looked up at Demelza and smiled tightly. “I’ll remember that.”

“Let’s call it a day.” Masi stood, picking up her empty coffee cup and dropping it in the trash as she went over to the door. “I’ll see you next week, Sam.”

“Yeah,” Sam smiled as he walked past her, shaking her hand quickly. “I’ll work on...all of that.” 

Masi chuckled. “I’m sure you will.”


	4. “We fly faster.”

 

The Torgan Valley, not far outside of the Ghazni city limits, had been a Taliban outpost for the past four months. The small city of Tangi was just outside of the mountain ranges, and had been dealing with the radicals for a while. Some of the men from Tangi had joined the Taliban in exchange for food and protection.

This was the view of the valley that Sam Wilson had. A dark green gash running through the sand-covered hills. Shadows lay in the valley, making the mountain ranges appear soft and sloping. It was near dusk, and the colors of the mountains were dappled in oranges and yellows, as bright and beautiful as leaves in autumn.

“Alright, one more flyby over Tangi and we’re heading home.” Riley’s voice came over the the radio, and Sam turned to look over at his partner, flying next to him. He gave the thumbs up and twisted his shoulders, grinning as he rolled in mid-air, the oranges and greens muddying his vision as he pulled up on the other side of Riley, laughing.

Sam loved this. Of course they were in a warzone, there was a constant sense of danger, but this was a gorgeous night, the night air was chilling, and Sam was euphoric. The air rushed over his shoulders, the g-force pulled at his face and he spread his arms. The wings responded to the turns of his shoulders and twists of his torso, but he still enjoyed the feeling of the cuffs attaching to sockets in the wings. He turned and whistled, and he knew that Riley would hear it through the radio.

He laughed and ducked down, then rose up above Riley before he turned quickly, pulling a wing in close to do barrel rolls over Riley. Sam was grinning, pleased by the stunt, the freedom, the thrill of flying on wings lifted up by warm currents.

Never one to back down from a challenge, Riley flipped Sam the bird, attached his own cuffs to the EXO’s wings and dove down. They flew through the valley quickly, performing aerial stunts as they darted across the ridges of the Torgan Valley, back and forth, zigzagging across the cultivated settlements. The small groupings of homes and farmsteads bloomed like flowers on the ground, the fences forming petals.

Airmen Sam Wilson and Riley Monroe were not strictly acting in the capacity of their mission framework. However, being in the Falcon Program gave them so freedom to act outside of their parameters. They were flying slowly, gliding in the updrafts that swept up the valley as the sun fell and the hot air became warmer in the last moments of the day.

The soft tolls of bells from the large Mosque de Dah Ahan rolled over them, the call to evening prayer echoing through the valley.

Sam wanted to pause over the Mosque, but he knew how it would look to have some kind of unknown flying drone over a religious building. It was the largest place in the Valley for a few miles, He let the wind steal his sigh, and he turned, done fooling around, heading back to the base in Ghazni, Riley ahead of him.

As they turned in tandem, shots rang out from the small village, dissonant. Riley stopped in midair and Sam pulled up, hovering a safe distance away.

“Do we get involved?” Riley unlatched his wrists, putting his fingers on his goggles, trying to zoom in on the source of the noise.

“It sounded like an automatic,” Sam said, already shooting fifty yards over, getting a different angle. He took a deep breath and nodded, looking over at at Riley. “Let’s go.”

Riley grinned and checked the weapons attached to his forearm braces. Sam did the same, sending a message to his superiors in Ghanzi.

“Approaching possible active combat situation, request backup,” Sam said, leaving no room for debate. He was reporting to his CO, but he had a larger directive, given by a superior officer above even Major Vrubel. To test and determine the extent of the EXO-7’s capabilities and the proficiency of the Falcon program. “Engaging now, time seven-thirty-p.m., automatic weapons fired-”

More shots and this time Riley responded by attaching his bracers and diving towards the noise.

“Engaging combatants!” Sam yelled, following Riley, “Backup needed at coordinates lat three-three-point-five-two, long six-eight-point-two-four, Tangi Province!”

By the time he finished the transmission he was already halfway to the surface. Riley had already landed in the town center, running through the main market as men and women ran away from the gunfire. Sam followed, people giving him a wide berth as he ran across the open area.

Turning around a corner, Riley met gunfire and quickly spun back behind a wall. Sam caught up a second later, and the two Falcons drew weapons. Sam nodded at Riley, jaw tight. “You lead.”

Riley didn’t smile at all, sobered by gunfire. He took a deep breath and took a step forward, back towards the gunfire. He shifted his shoulders, pulling back his elbows and launching the wings. Sam followed suit, and Riley immediately pushed off, using his mech-enhanced strength to jump further into the fray, one of his wings up as a shield.

Sam jumped in after him, ducking around Riley and firing at the combatants. One went down immediately and the other two scrambled further into the large grocer’s building, still firing as they tried to find cover from the Falcon’s gunfire.

The soldiers retreated behind the wall again. Sam took out a flashbang, pivoted around the corner and threw the bomb into the grocery. Even if there were civilians in the store, the flashbang wouldn’t cause any bodily damage. Sam and Riley both covered their ears as the grenade went off, but within a couple seconds they were already pushing off the ground, breaking into the storefront, using their wings as shields.

The grenade produced no explosion, but shelves were rocked. The Falcon’s goggles let Sam and Riley see through the haze as a few shots were fired. Sam raised his gun and quickly took out one combatant, and Riley moved around the aisles to fire at the second.

It was over in less than two minutes. Sam and Riley quickly found the bodies of the shooters and dragged them to the front of the grocery. Two were injured and the third dead. Sam made an attempt to clean up the store as Riley looked over the three men.

Sam was always shocked by how fast a situation could go from peaceful to all fucked up. They had responded to gunfire, and seen very little before assuming the worst of these men. Looking around, it seemed obvious that they were not of the village, dressed differently, and armed to the teeth with firepower, grenades and a wicked looking machete the full length of Sam’s arm. This time they had been right, but what about next time?

Sam was still frowning as he walked along the lines of shelves. A quick movement caught his attention and he turned quickly, his guns instantly in hand.

In the corner a young woman, barely out of girlhood, let out a small cry, immediately covering her head with her hands.

“Whoa, whoa,” Sam murmured, putting his hands up, his guns turning along his thumbs, sliding back along the bracers of his arms. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

The woman twitched, turning away again. Sam closed his eyes for a second before speaking in stuttering Arabic.

“ _I mean no harm_ ,” he said quietly, crouching down. “ _I am here to help_.”

“ _Leave_!” The woman yelled, turning away from him, shivering. “ _You_ _Americans, coming to this place and hurting us. We have nothing!_ ”

Sam caught enough of the language to know that he was considered a threat, and not a friend. He stood and took another step back, hands open as he watched the woman. She continued to shake.

It was not a thing that could be helped. Sam had always felt that he could do something, as if he could change something, even if it was something small and simple. This woman was beyond him, a thing he had helped create and could no longer reach.

There was something tight in his throat as he turned away, going back to Riley where he spoke with other members of the village. Most seemed grateful, but Sam’s eyes were brighter. There were darker shadows lining faces, some eyes that were half-lidded and hidden under creased fabrics.

He took a step back, feeling disjointed and strange, the endorphins wearing off as he realized what he had just done. Glancing back at the shot-up center, he stepped away from the small crowd of people. Riley caught on quick, and they shot up into the air, the force of the wind pulling at the faces, the strain of the wings and the structure suits they wore pulling at their necks and shoulders.

Weighted and weightless.

* * *

 

Most of the missions they ran were recon. The Falcons could slide under any radar, flew lower to the ground, and could react faster than any drone operator. They managed to deliver messages to towns under siege, divert shipments, and for the first deployment, most of Sam’s action was covert.

Neither Sam nor Riley minded that they weren’t being given missions that put them in the direct line of fire. It was easier this way, they could still convince themselves that they were saving people. Most of the time they didn’t rescue individuals, but were sent in to extract entire teams, take out small, underweaponized factions that had somehow managed to gain a foothold.

He saw plenty of action, but it was often removed. The idea of drink water drive on didn’t apply as much to him. He could fly.

At one of the weekly EXO-7 team meetings Colonel Guerra strode in with his usual force, but without the stern look to his face. He was somber, drawn in, and the dust seemed to settle more deeply in the camouflage of his uniform.

Guerra looked each of them in the eye, the three pairs of Falcons, the engineers in back, the team of recon and info strategists. All told a little less than twenty people crammed into the room to hear Guerra solemnly tell all assembled that Airmen Eugene Rapp and Cameron L. Strickland had gone down in the line of duty last night, during a mission across the Kuran Wa Munjan area of the Hindu Kush Mountains, north of Jalalabad.

The news was delivered in a clipped, clinical tone, and the entire room tensed. There hadn’t been any losses in the Falcon program, and hearing of two pararescue men, trained even beyond PJ standards, had been lost shook everyone. Even usually-jovial Belanger, standing in the doorway, arms folded over his neatly pressed grey suit, had the decency to look somber.

Riley put up a hand, shifting in his seat. Guerra pressed his mouth and shook his head.

“I know you all have questions--”

“Damn right,” Riley muttered, sitting back and crossing his arms. Colonel Guerra, to his credit, either didn’t hear him or pretended not to notice.

“Unfortunately due to the nature of the mission we cannot release details, but Belanger has analyzed the data that the scientists and techs have managed to glean from the blackboxes of the jetpacks. We’ve distilled the data and we’re going to deliver the report and advise the rest of the teams on how to proceed in the future.”

“What knocked them down?”

Sam glanced backwards, and he supposed he had to be grateful it wasn’t Riley yelling at a superior officer.

“They were on the ground. We’re still of the opinion that in the air, wearing the EXO-7, with the amount of training that you all have, there is almost no chance of being shot.”

“And what happened on the ground?” Riley asked, ignoring the look that Sam shot him.

“Not enough protection, not enough practice using the wings as shields...and some very high power artillery from the enemy.”

Sam was staring at the desk in front of him, frowning. Rapp and Strickland had been good airmen, and there was no way that Strickland would have been careless on the ground. Cam had a neck like a swivel, and if there was a more eagle-eyed man out of the bunch Sam had yet to see it. There was more to the story, but Sam was sure that he’d never find out what that was.

Riley glanced at Sam, obviously thinking along the same lines. Sam shook his head once and Riley pressed his mouth, deciding to follow his partner’s lead.

There were a few more items on Guerra’s punch list, and he got through them all in his usual speed. At the end there was another short moment of silence for the two airmen, and then they were dismissed. They had regional commanders, and Sam and Riley weren’t scheduled to meet with their CO for another few hours.

“That’s a load of shit and you know it,” Riley said, almost as soon as they were out of the room. Sam reached over and squeezed his upper arm, a warning. Jerking his arm away from Sam’s grip, Riley turned, leaning in a little, handsome face twisted in something like anger and something like confusion.

 _Betrayal_ , Sam realized.

“Man, they ain’t telling us something.”

“And they ain’t gonna to tell us,” Sam said quietly, frowning. He put his hand on Riley’s back, pulling him further down the hall. “You think they’re about to tell us what’s happening out there? What kind of nasty shit the enemy’s got behind those mountains? In those caves? No…” He shook his head, frowning as he pulled a red-faced Riley along by his jacket. “No, we ain’t getting that kind of clearance, man. No matter how many millions of dollars we got strapped on our backs.”

“So what do we do?” Riley’s voice had gone from angry to plaintive. Sam had a way of getting to the core of the problem.

Sam let go of Riley’s collar, and they continued walking through the halls of the compound.

“We fly faster.”

* * *

 

In his dreams, when he dreamt, if he dreamt at all, Sam Wilson flew without artillery. He didn’t fly over Afghanistan, or Pakistan, or California, but over New York City.

It was different, slower, a glide, where he rocked back and forth over the east side of manhattan, eyes over the East River before he veered wide again, back over York Avenue, Second (constantly under construction), wavered around Third, and then back to the River.

This was, of course, impossible, but Sam was not aware of that.

Usually when he flew that straps from the pack dug into his shoulders, leaving bright red welts and leaving a sore spot in between his shoulder blades that no amount of PT seemed to be able to work out. This was freedom, a different kind, another beast.

Sam didn’t smell the tar, but the sky was a cathedral, the soft shuffle of wings and air brought him back down to earth, sat his ass down in a pew as he looked up at the empty pulpit.

Strangers, all around, soldiers in uniform, row after row. Pew after pew. There was some soft of unseen signal and all the soldiers stood, saluted, but still nobody appeared. The pulpit remained empty, the heat overwhelming, the rustling of feathers became a march, uniform and regular and insistent.

He stayed still, feet nailed to the ground again, and he clasped his hands on the back of the pew in front of him. The soldiers filed out, but the heat remained, overwhelming and suffocating. The march didn’t end, the echoes reverberating in the church. Eyes wide, mouth open, Sam looked up, searching for something, but there was only the ironwrought light fixture.

He was waiting, and he would wait here.

There was a rumble, darkly, lowly, and Sam twisted in the pew. The back of the church had fallen out, the smell of burnt asphalt was assaulting him, there was nothing there, the church was falling into a tawny gully, a mountainous cliffside. He turned back to the pulpit, but there was nothing there either, not even the altar, just a wall, grey and empty.

Swallowing, he tried to stand, but he fell back, blinking hard, unsure of the world around him, but seeing it pass by, seeing the stained glass and the steel chandelier twist into shadows of familiar shapes. He lay back, falling past the stones and mountains, not even trying to fly.

There were no straps on his shoulders, he couldn’t fly. He closed his eyes, but he knew around him that the clouds were rushing by, and beneath him lay Harlem, and the above him were the soldiers that he was leaving behind, and around him was the church he had built to protect himself, and all of it was slowly falling with him.


	5. "Nope"

Days blurred.

There was no other way to put it. The days were a blur. Sam had a hard time remembering what day of the week it was, and when the sun was up he could barely tell the time in between ten in the morning and six at night. It was disorienting, unscheduled, and it was driving him fucking crazy.

He had found a home in a suburb of northern Arlington in a place that still had trees, but close enough to a subway that Sam could still make it where he had to go. It gave him privacy and freedom, but there was something unnerving about it. That he had a home and a bed, not a cot, that he had walls and roof and things that kept him in.

That was the way he saw it, that these were the things that kept him in. He didn’t have many possessions he treasured, didn’t have valuables. His gun was in a safe, his knives next to them. These were the walls that were keeping him in.

The subway was supposed to make him feel connected, and that was supposed to be important. He knew that if he got in one of those cramped little cars and found the right line, he’d be able to go somewhere else. That was connection, it was something. It had to be. Sometimes he couldn’t think about connecting, about having other people around. The idea of connection used to mean brotherhood and blood and dirt and lukewarm water with sand in it.

Now it was different. Connection was pressing against another on a train car, passing someone on the parkway, standing next to another person in a museum as they ask the tour guide questions about history. It was banality made flesh, persons lining up to repeat themselves, over and over. It seemed pointless, and he still couldn’t understand how he had gone from family to strangers, why he had left it all behind.

The days blurred.

That was the hard part, he realized, blinking at a portrait in the national gallery (on Masi’s recommendation), that he wanted connections but he was unprepared to cultivate them. Family used to be easy. Family used to be assigned, even.

Riley had never felt like an assignment.

“Sir?”

Sam started out of his reverie, shoulders jerking as he looked over at the tour guide. He blinked almost owlishly at her, and her head tilted down as her eyebrows went slowly up.

“Sir.”

“Sorry, is the…” he glanced around, blinked again. He licked his lips, looking at the crowds around him. “Is something wrong?”

“You haven’t moved in ten minutes.” Her voice was monotone, weary from hours standing in a corner and watching tourists and young couples walk through the halls. Sam ducked his head and glanced around the special gallery, nodding once.

“Nope.”

The guide blinked, frowned, looked around, and then nodded. Nobody else seemed to care about the strange man staring at the photographs. Turning, she left Sam standing there, going back to her post.

Swaying on his feet, Sam looked back at the photographs that lined the walls of the gallery. He swallowed, his eyes catching those of another soldier. He knew them, gave them names. He clenched his hands into fists, taking a deep breath.

They were only photographs. They were only appearances. They were the only thing left, after these soldiers had died.

The air was suddenly hot, oppressive, and Sam felt the sweat slide along the blades of his shoulders, as if he were still wearing his pack. It was a burden spread across his collarbones, the distribution of pressure strapped across his chest and down his sides, reinforcing his spine. The heat was a desperate, living thing, crawling up his spine, pressing in on his throat. The gallery wasn’t real, the pain in his shoulders was a dull ache, his boots didn’t reach up his ankles, and he blinked and looked down to see sneakers.

You didn’t wear sneakers in a war zone.

He took another step back and looked up, startled. There was sand in his eyes. He was in the gallery. The air conditioning was rumbling, tourists flowed in and out of the rooms like a tide. Taking a deep breath, the hot air caught in his throat, clawed at his eyes as he breathed.

All these things were true.

The soldiers were surrounding him, and he glanced to the side and forced himself to go with the ebb of the bodies around him. They were tour groups from Japan, speaking in a language he couldn’t follow. A French couple in front of a picture of a laughing woman, her surrounding draped by shadows, _One of the Boys_.

He moved through the gallery, seeing faces of the soldiers surrounding him, hung up on the walls, a testament to the decade of war that his country had suffered. Funded, died for, bled for. It was so much more than this small room of photographs, and yet the pointlessness of it seemed apparent. What was the reason for this.

With leaden feet, Sam walked through the gallery, the faces, and bodies, and soldiers all passing by. He looked over at the tour guide, but she was watching a group of younger students. He swallowed and quickly left the gallery, intending to leave, but was turned around and ended up in the stairway.

There was no real direction to Sam’s steps. Where the crowd went, he followed. It wasn’t mindless; he was aware of it, of the necessity of the movements of his muscles, of the direction upwards until he couldn’t go up anymore. He was always trying to go higher, that was the real problem.

Pushed along into another modern gallery, Sam found himself staring at a large Wiley painting, nearly floor to ceiling, beautiful, common and uncommon, a masterwork of Americana and antiquarian sensibility. It was Napoleon and Not-Napoleon. Ice T resplendent, and Sam smiled, taking it in.

He continued through the gallery and then at the back, before he entered into another hall, there he was. It was titled _Triple Portrait of Charles I_ , but it was him instead. He made as if to mention the mistake to a tour guide, to another tourist, but he found himself without company in the corner of the hall. His eyes were drawn back to the painting, and there was no denying it.

Sam saw himself there, standing in triplicate before the green and orange background, each pose stuttering into existence something different and urgent. The center Sam Wilson, the hero-soldier, the leader and standard bearer, wore his goggles down, his pack strapped. He was staring straight ahead, unforgiving, immovable, unerring, unyielding, shoulders broad, golden orange vines brushing his chest. To the left, Sam Wilson in mourning, eyes half-closed, head bent, glancing over, showing the viewer grief but not inviting him to share it.

Sam, illuminated-and-flesh, breathing and beating, took a step backwards, the heat pooling around his chest, along his calves as he tried to turn away.

The soldier to the right was consumed by willow and thistle, thorn and orange flowers, the green fading into dark valleys, the bright yellows creating high peaks. Sam Wilson-to-the-right was unconcerned by these vines that held him tight, angry but unfighting. Sam-to-the-left closed his eyes, turned away, back facing the captive audience, fell forward. Sam-to-the-center rolled his shoulders, set his jaw, frowned and didn’t move. Sam-to-the-right faded into something brutal, baring his teeth, angry and in pain, spurned and destroyed, burned by the fire that began to consume the paintings, the walls, the entire floor.

Heat was a living thing, and Sam pressed the back of his hand to his mouth, closing his eyes. He needed to remember to breathe, even through the smoke. Taking another step back, Sam was jostled by another group, and he spun, eyes wide, and his first thought was that he had to save these people, that he had to save all of them, that they were his responsibility and that there was nothing there.

There was nothing but the art on the walls, the crowds of tourists, and the young tour guide who had made her way upstairs and was staring at Sam Wilson.

He swallowed, glanced back at the _Triple Portrait of Charles I_ , and then at the tour guide.

She stepped forward, frowning, and he immediately turned, keeping his head down, trying his best not to jostle the other people at the museum as he found the staircase, the main hall, the foyer, the sidewalk. Breathing hard, he looked upwards, the gray sky of D.C. in autumn, and he swallowed, shivered, and turned.

How much could he really take? What did they expect of him?

There was no hallowed ground, there were no empty skies. He decided to make the long walk home as far as he could stand it, and ended up walking for almost two hours. Where was his strength now?

Finally, he found a train that took him across the river, a bus that dropped him off close to home, and then his bed.

He had been warned that an irregular sleep pattern would haunt him for a while, but he hated waking up at two in the morning with nothing to do but stare at the ceiling. It was the most weighted he had ever felt, covers half on, a separation between him and the world. Connections were important, but there was cost.

Inertia, complacence, it all took its toll on Sam. He couldn’t bring himself to get out of the shower, long after the water had lost all it’s heat. When he finally did, he put the kettle on for tea and forgot it, watching the steam rise, ignoring the shrill whistle until the acrid smell of smoking rubber jolted him forward. It was the smell of tar, and asphalt, and exhaust, and Sam double and then triple checked that the stove was off before he went back upstairs, mug empty on the counter.

His life had become empty, and it was slowly killing him.


	6. “You just have to keep going.”

Sam had taken Dr. Masi’s words to heart after his last session. Besides the museums and events at the VA, he had joined a running league, started interviewing to be a Big Brother at the DC chapter, and even taken a train up to NYC to visit Deon. 

It was something like recovery, and it felt better than the routine he had come to expect from his days. 

There was no great breakthrough while he had been in therapy, although he was sure that it had helped, but there was a startling revelation that occurred while he was running. He had taken the bridge over from Arlington into DC proper, and had been running around the mall when there was a sharp crack of a taxi backfiring rather violently. 

Sam turned so fast that he had tripped over his own feet and fell on the lawn, scrambling back on his hands as he searched for the source of the explosion. His head whipped back and forth as he tried to find cover, a rock, a dune, a humvee, anything. The entire episode only lasted five seconds, and as soon as he realized that he was only near a rather stately oak tree and there were only the first signs of life on the mall, he relaxed and turned his back against the rough bark, closing his eyes. 

It wasn’t an attack; there was no overwhelming fear, just the tart smell of gasoline and the dew against his hands. It hurt, realizing that he had scars and trauma, but it was something that he already knew, and was just now accepting. 

A reveal, but more like a conceit. A magic trick where Sam had the vanishing coin in hand the whole time. 

It felt liberating, to know where the weights were that kept you fastened to the bottom of the ocean. Sam was still drowning, but at least there was a surface, somewhere. He took a few more deep breaths, remembered that he wasn’t underwater, and got back up.

After another weekly session with the doctor, Sam took some time to go over the message board that Masi had mentioned a few times. There was Adaptive Judo, a buddhist group that advertised mindful resilience, and a golf tournament that was occurring somewhere in Iowa, but was done to raise awareness through “Training, Exposure and Experience.” The joke was just stupid enough to make Sam roll his eyes, but he took a flyer anyway, resolving to never pick up golf. 

On a separate board a group therapy session was looking for volunteers. They wanted veterans to facilitate a talk about trauma and integration, and while Sam felt particularly unqualified for the position, he made a note of the time and place, and resolved to at least show up. 

He had to keep reminding himself that he had a problem. The real magic trick was convincing himself that was okay. 

Sam had always enjoyed running, and it became a meditative thing each morning. He thought about how going to church had prepared him for war, how his father had built a cathedral out of a kitchen for his mother, how each pounding step was another bead in a rosary that never ran out of prayers. 

It was strange that he thought so often of church but often ignored its purpose. God seemed so far removed from the church he remembered as a child. Instead it was the rituals he focused on, the smell of his mother's lilac perfume and how it clashed with the bubblegum tweenage scent his sister preferred. These memories came in sentences, a full idea, but incomplete. There was little context to his visions when he ran, they floated like epithets, they rained down like judgements. 

It was all the same. A pew, a pulpit, a preacher. The rhythm lined up with his footbeats, his heart-steps, his earth-bound, feather-flighted soul. A pew, a pulpit, a preacher. 

(A fool, a flight, a fight, a father.)

He was getting better. Sam was hurting, but he saw progress. 

He joined a pickup game outside of the local high school. Teachers and some parents throwing the rock around. It wasn’t hard to make fun of himself, it wasn’t hard to laugh. It wasn’t hard to enjoy the game and even beer afterwards, smiling at the sweet lady who was very married, but very beautiful. 

The day before his formal appointment with Dr. Masi, Sam made his way back to the VA for the community-led group. 

He arrived a few minutes early, prepared some muddy coffee, and wondered if this sort of sticky, smoky scent would haunt him. Coffee at the VA always smelled faintly of tobacco, cut fresh. Sam found another man he knew, Shane Weber, a Sergeant in the Army who had been on the business end of an IED, and lost his right leg up to his thigh. 

The session started tame, easy even. A young woman who was a medic at the Manas AFB in Kyrgyzstan led the discussion. Sam watched the stories being drawn from veterans like moths that were taken by a bright light. There was hope here, a deep brightness held in a cave. A luminescent crystal that was harmless to the soft wings that beat upwards. 

It was easy to let his own stories go, easy to tell them that he had watched his own partner die, that if the shot hadn’t done it, the fall had. The parachute didn’t deploy. He had dropped without wings. Sam spoke and watched the moths settle over his eyes. He blinked and looked down after people applauded gently, thanking him. 

Shane’s hand was on his leg, squeezing his knee, and Sam smiled at him and nodded. He took another deep breath and found that it was getting easier and easier to accept that he was fixing himself, that he needed fixing. 

Sam and Shane went to dinner, agreed to meet at the next group session, and Sam went home and felt like the people pressing in from every angle on the subway weren’t suffocating him. 

The session with Masi went easy, and Sam didn’t feel drained at the end of it. Usually after therapy he felt frustrated and ineffectual, but there were successes to report instead of disappointments. Masi pointed out that he was getting validation from checking boxes rather than experiences. 

Sam sighed and shook his head, and Masi had just chuckled. 

“It’s still a good step,” she admitted, smiling. “You just have to keep going.”

After therapy, Sam stood in front of the message board and signed up to train as a volunteer for the group sessions. He pulled down another that asked for blood donors and took the number of a man who was organizing a kickball league. 

These were normal things. Sam was trying very hard to be normal again. 

For the most part, it was working. 

He ran in the mornings, he had a resume he had handed out to a few places (Sam would readily admit that he was taking his time, he still had four months of unemployment benefits left), and he was training to be a therapy leader at the VA. 

He had friends, a significant step in the right direction. This was an opinion he had gleaned from Masi and the rest of the therapists and volunteers at the VA. Sam had joined the adult pickup league that met twice a week on the Yorktown courts, he and Shane went for dinner a few times a month, and he had even attempted to go to a concert, although that had been less of a success. 

Two months away from his benefit running out, Masi mentioned an opening at the VA.

“They want a volunteer organizer,” she said, passing the application and information packet to Sam. “You’ve been coming here almost a year, you’ve been getting more involved with the veteran’s community, and I would be happy to write you a recommendation.”

Sam blinked, surprised. He took the papers and leafed through the responsibilities quickly. It was a coordinator and leadership position. He’d be able to set up events, lead workshops, oversee outreach campaigns. He was already enmeshed in the VA, why not take it a step further?

“I’ll think about it,” he murmured, glancing up at Dr. Masi. “Thanks.”

She smiled. “Anytime.”

Sam didn’t wait long. It was true that getting a job was checking off another box, but this was a job where he could get real meaning from the work. He had finished training to be a volunteer, he was already helping out at the VA in his spare time, and the girl at the front desk had invited him out to drinks with ‘the group’, which he had turned down, but might meet up with her for trivia night next tuesday. 

Turns out that he was exactly what the VA wanted. Charming, no-nonsense, good with people, two tours of duty, lots of volunteer work, and goals for the future.

A future. 

Sam was grinning as he told Deon what he was doing, and laughed when his brother insisted on visiting. He hung up the phone and felt as if he were glowing. There was a purpose, a direction, a future. 

It was something moths were made of. 


	7. “We’re good.”

Sam’s first tour in the middle east was experimental at best, and lasted about eight months. Sam, Riley, and the rest of the Falcon program got almost three months off, and Sam decided to get an apartment with Riley in San Diego. He enjoyed the beaches more than he thought he would. Riley had sworn off sand entirely, and spent most of his time traveling up and down California’s coastline.

The second tour was scheduled for a full year. The Falcons had been doing good work as a PJ branch, and had been operating at full capacity for about four months. That meant a mission every few days, and as many as ten in a week. The entire battalion was on high alert, and the amassed teams of engineers, scientists, doctors, physicians and soldiers were working around the clock to ensure the tech and the PJs themselves were firing on all cylinders at all times. 

Drink water, fly on. 

There was little time to rest. The Falcons were in high demand as the most effective solution to any number of wartime problems that came up. Diffusing bombs, recon missions, scouting enemy territory, flybys over non-combatant areas where they needed to stay absolutely undetectable? Call a Falcon. 

These were the missions that Sam and Riley ran for their first tour, and once they got back into the war zone they picked up as if they had never left. 

Drink water, fly on. 

There was an incident where a humvee convoy had been attacked and they needed the Falcons to assess the damage. Sam and Riley flew in tight formation, high enough up to look like a strange drone or awkward set of birds, and took pictures of the devastation. There were bodies that looked like rose petals on the ground, and dark thorns of vehicles, smoke rising like a sick perfume. 

They spent an hour sending a live feed back to camp, and as soon as they were cut free of their widening gyre, both Sam and Riley decided to fuck regulation and go from zero to two hundred the full distance home. There had been people on the ground, but no movement. 

For all the strength of men and steel, nothing survived the bomb that wasn’t out of range to begin with. 

He felt deaf. Like there was something missing. A complete lack of an element he once considered as vital as oxygen. He could understand it, but it didn’t make sense. Where was the reason? It was hard to imagine this war in such an unflinching gaze. He was sent into trauma zones regularly. Weekly, if not daily. He wasn’t here to make a life, he was here to save them. 

Sam stumbled as he landed on the tarmac, shook off Guerra’s questions, barely responded to his CO, and left Riley confused. What god was there when angels wore bulletproof vests and carried dogtags. It seemed like these lives were just blocked out, as if hands were waved and triggers were soft things, and utter loss was just a vacuum of space. These were the semblances that passed for life, that stood for war. It was awful.

Drink water. 

Sam snuck into the officer’s building and went to a private shower. He stayed under the spray for two ten-minute sessions, and imagined that he couldn’t see. There was only a sliver of light coming from under the door, and he ignored it, turning his head away, pressing his temple against the tile that wasn’t exactly cold, but just barely lukewarm. 

Heat, like death, seemed inescapable. 

Sam was no coward--he could never be called a coward--but he could still be afraid and sickened. It hurt something deep inside him, seeing people spread like a child’s temper tantrum. People splayed out like things that meant nothing, toys that were replaceable and picked up by uncaring hands. 

It was a monumental effort to open his eyes. 

He remembered what he and Riley had done. The people they had saved, the radical terror groups that they had helped stop. The dozens of men, women, children, and soldiers they had pulled out of wreckage, rubble, rivers, and vehicles. It was no small thing, and wasn’t that important? It was good enough, it was something. 

There was flying. There was the feeling of freedom and breathlessness, the pressure on his shoulders, the burn along the back of his thighs as he kept his core tight and fought to keep his body vertical and fast.

There was something reassuring in the soreness of his limbs, something that reminded him all of it was real. 

Fly on.

Sam could still reassure himself. All this was for a purpose. All this was for a cause. Maybe the military had some fucked up reasoning, but what he and Riley did was good. It helped people, saved lives. Despite the fact that Sam had once fallen asleep under a tank while an air cover siren blared, he had a hard time quieting his mind. He tossed and turned, seeing blood in the dirt under his nails, distorted by the night and bleary eyes. Eventually he exhausted himself and drifted off, nails bitten to the quick. 

More bizarre dreams haunted him. It seemed as if waking and dreaming were the same thing, as if they bled into each other like shifting sands. He dreamed of mountains that rose from dark stormclouds that broke open to rain lead and bullets. He dreamed of bright saffron-yellow shawls, the laughter of children as they played soccer with a ball made of trash, kept together with string and duct tape. There was the smell of gasoline, the heat of burning flesh and sunburnt skin and when he woke up he was already back on the paved-over green getting the EXO pack strapped to his back.

“Hey,” Riley said, suddenly in front of his face. The soldier’s face was dusty, burnished like the color of sweet almonds. “Man, you look out of it.” 

Sam shook his head, “No.”

“You need a break.” Riley took a step back, already turning to wave over a tech. “We’re going to sub out--” 

“Riley,” Sam murmured and shook his head. He put his hand on Riley’s shoulder and the other PJ paused, looking back to his partner. Sam’s mouth was a firm line, eyes like obsidian, almost charred. “We’re good.” 

Riley narrowed his eyes, and nodded once. Sam smiled, just a little, and rolled his shoulders as another strap was tightened. “Get back over,” Sam murmured, jerking his head. “Your engineer’s gunna whup your ass if you keep making her wait.”

As Riley skipped back to his mark, Sam shook his head and took a deep breath in. 

He took a deep breath out. 

A few minutes later he was flying. He had his mission flight plan loaded into his wrist com, he had his director speaking in one ear, he had some of Riley in the other, mumbling to his own director. The land spread out before him and he managed to breathe again. 

It was cold in the higher atmo, always was, but the sun was heavy against his shoulders, and the smells of the desert didn’t reach the clouds. There was something prickly in the sky that day, as if it were about to rain dust.

They were doing a basic recon and retrieval. A small band of soldiers were out on their own recon mission in a mountainous area near their base when their humvee broke down. The roads were hard to get through even with a top of the line rider, and another one would just make them more of a target.

Usually the soldiers would be told to sit still and wait, but there was a health situation, and Sam and Riley were going in to evac a soldier that was suffering from heatstroke and severe dehydration. 

They flew fast, at the limit, and low to the ground. It was standard; flying under two hundred feet let them go sub radar detection, and they got out of an eyeline as fast as possible. They were barely talking, communicating mostly with hand gestures that they held up close to their chests, braced along their shoulders, passing signs back and forth through the sky. 

Both Falcons turned slightly, had directions in their ears, and then there was the bright light of a small sun shooting up from the hills. 

The explosion rocked Sam back, caused him to roll in the air, one wing tilted, both still spread, too close to the ground to duck in on himself. He kept his eyes open, saw Riley’s wings pointing upward like broken arms, his legs pointed straight down, all the restraints along his core, shoulders and thighs driving his body into the most aerodynamic shape possible. 

There was something wrong with Sam when he screamed as he dove; a raptor plummeting from the sky like a hammer. He didn’t think, willed himself forward, topped his speed, and watched Riley collapse against the mountainside in a harrowing shape.

Sam remembers this: he saw it. He reported on it. He had to see that Riley was dead. 

You do not leave a man behind. 

The humvee was told to wait. 

Sam was told to move. 

He took cover and watched the body, noted and reported the direction of the missile, avoided two more that arced towards him like sunbursts, and when air support had been called in, he was the man who dove to retrieve the ruined Falcon. 

Riley was left there, in the burning valley. His EXO-7 Falcon pack was recovered, and the technology safely pulled out of enemy hands. 

Drink water. 

Sam flew to base with the image of his friend’s mangled body burned into his memory like a prayer. He held onto the Falcon pack, the wings bent and twisted from impact, and tried to remember the hymns he sang in church, trying to imagine the kinds of forgiveness he used to ask for, trying to think of something that was nothing like Riley Monroe.

He delivered the pack and was taken out of his own, forced to eat and drink, given new clothes, an extra shower privilege. All of this was meant to calm him down. Give him time. He had lost someone in the field, more than a brother. Barely two hours after landing, he met with his director, 

Colonel Guerra and Mister Belanger. 

Sam Wilson finished his tour grounded except for the most basic recon missions, backed up by Ishikawa and Strand. It was a pity move, but he was grateful for it. At least this way he didn’t have to think, didn’t have to pay attention He let his director direct, he read the hand signs from Ishi, and sometimes he forgot that he could breathe. 

There was no church in the mountains. 


	8. “Am I stuck?”

“The thing we got to take from this, all of us, all of this--” Sam Wilson made a vague gesture in the air, looking up a little and then at some of the individual members of the group. He didn’t single anyone out, but he knew, sort of, the vets that were having trouble. He saw Reina picking at the hair on her arms, Noah hadn’t looked up the entire session, Adam seemed nervous and jumpy. These were the people he was speaking to, these vets who had seen and understood and hadn’t recovered. 

“The thing is that we aren’t alone.”

It wasn’t a proclamation, a statement. He knew that this wasn’t his Daddy’s church, there would be no hallelujah choir here. 

“That can be good to know. Even if you feel alone and isolated, look around and remember these faces. Think about these people when you can’t think about anything else,” Sam said, watching the veteran’s for some kind of reaction. There were a few nods, some glances around, and Sam could see the winged things circling above their heads as if they could dream in waking moments. 

He stepped back from the podium, watching his desert congregation, his pariah parish. “Would anyone like to share?”

As a young man came up, Sam sat behind him, watching the group of ten or fifteen soldiers. This was a listening and support group. Most of these men and women spoke about how hard it was to reintegrate, what it was like outside of the military, the problems they had now that they were home. It was haunting, that all these people had troubles sleeping, with finances, acting kind. 

Sam had adopted a tough love attitude. Be kind, but firm. Be honest, not malicious. Be respectful, but challenge. It was a balancing act, but Sam was used to being in-between, and felt like as long as he was at the VA, he would always be caught there, in a cage where he preached acceptance and love and perseverance but kept himself safe and contained. 

He said as much to Shane during one of their late night meals at a diner. 

“Am I stuck?” Sam asked, reading over the menu for the fourth time, flipping it over to start at the beginning. 

“Yep.” Shane sipped his coffee, his menu open to a page with a horrible pictures of french toast and pancakes with whipped cream on top. 

Sam raised his eyebrows and pursed his mouth slightly. He glanced up at Shane, who was looking out the window, and then shook his head. “Thanks.”

Shane nodded again. “Yep.”

Instead of responding directly to Shane, Sam rolled his eyes and smiled at the waitress. He ordered an omelette and tried to ignore Shane’s juvenile palate. 

“Sugar is the new tobacco.”

“Ain’t in therapy now, Wilson.”

Sam smirked and let it slide. He glanced around the diner, looking over the people huddled into groups and families. They were smiling, leaning over coffee mugs and crayons. There were kids here, and Sam realized that he had sort of forgotten what children looked like. He passed them, but he didn’t work with kids, they weren’t a part of his paradigm. 

It was like waking up. He took a deep breath and looked back over at Shane, who was picking at a piece of his prosthetic. 

“Itchy?” 

“What did I just say about therapy?” Shane was smiling, and Sam rolled his eyes, sitting back. 

They sat in silence, Shane picking at his straps, Sam watching the kids come and go through the diner. Families, whole and happy. It was something novel, light wings, a hopeful ideal. There were normal people, doing normal things, being normal, and it was immediate. It seemed like he could fit into something like this. 

Glancing over at Shane as he smiled at the waitress, Sam suddenly realized that he fit in already. 

It only got easier. 

It wasn’t mundane, just a routine. And routine Sam could handle. 

Stasis was one of those things that came softly, creeping in the darker corners of his room at night. The panic attacks disappeared, but that feeling didn’t leave. It was stagnancy, it was stillness, it was routine made insidious and dark. 

There was no lack of purpose; he had plenty of people asking after him, men and women who needed his help, who were his friends. He felt lonely and surrounded, empty and fulfilled. There was nothing missing in particular, it was just...monotone. The same color. 

He didn’t have regular sessions with Dr. Masi, but he asked her one day if he could schedule an appointment. If she was surprised, she hid it well, told him to come by early next Tuesday.

She asked him how he felt, what was going on, and he explained as best he could. That he liked his work, that he felt it was important, but he didn’t see the appeal of living like this. He had figured out the trick to living as a civilian, but he wasn’t sure he liked it. 

“You’re bored.”

Sam blinked and looked up at Dr. Masi. She was smiling at him, eyebrows up. “You’re stable. You have a job, friends, a social life. You’re a dog and domestic away from being settled.”

Sam shook his head, frowning. 

“I don’t want to go back to the war,” he said quickly, glancing to the side. 

“I know.”

Sam shifted before responding again. He took a deep breath, “I’m bored.” 

Masi hummed, smiling slightly. 

“It seems like a symptom,” Masi said after a minute. “You have a social life, your family visits occasionally, you volunteer outside of work, outwardly...it doesn’t seem as if you should be bored with your life.”

Sam swallowed and then shook his head. It was expected. There was nothing truly spontaneous or life-threatening about living in Arlington and working as a secondary trauma counselor. It hit him that he would rather be excited than safe. 

“God, I’m so fucked up.” 

“Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“That I’m not grateful,” Sam moaned, sitting back in his chair and looking up. He took a deep breath, running his hands over his face. “I’m just..I feel lost. I feel like knowing I’m bored is useless. I feel like there’s nothing I can do to be...not bored. I’m doing everything, and it feels like the second I think that I’m getting better I realize that I hate it. I hate being bored.”

“Sam.”

The man took a deep breath, ran his hand over his head and looked across at Dr. Masi again. She smiled and put her hand out. It was surprising move, but he reached over and took her hand. She squeezed it and nodded. 

“There’s nothing wrong with being bored. You just have to learn how accept it.”

The next morning Sam went on his morning run, crossing the Arlington Bridge to jog around the Mall. He liked his routine, he liked having expectations met. There was nothing wrong with it.  
The dawn hours made DC seem quiet. Not deserted; there were still cabs and tourists, but it was all muted. It was something lighter and fragile, the inside of a church before the congregation fills in. Full of expectation. 

So he ran in soft light, forgetting his past as he ran forward. He managed to lose himself, head up, swinging arms, forgetting his breath as he just moved. 

And then a man passed him, running at a sprint. He was willing to chalk it up to ego, some asshole who needed to be that much faster. As soon as the man was out of his sightline Sam put it out of his mind. 

The voice came from behind again, “On your left.”

What the fuck? Sam made a noise, but didn’t respond, annoyed beyond belief that this bro had done an extra lap just to pass him again, telling him in the same smug tone that he was passing him. Sam let it slide, trying to place the blond as he disappeared around another corner of the mall. 

He focused on his run, but it wasn’t long before he heard this man came up a third time. Sam, at the end of his rope, exhausted, almost done with his five mile, snapped. 

“Don’t you say it, don’t you-”

“On your left.”

Sam grit his teeth and tried to speed up to match pace, but quickly fell behind. 

He stood on the edge of the mall, watching the man he presumed to be Captain America run speedily away from him. Sam shook his head, hunching his shoulders, leaning over his knees as he tried to catch his breath. It didn’t take long for him to end up on the lawn, back against a tree. 

Sam wasn’t sure whether to feel insulted or giddy that one of his childhood heroes had run by him half a dozen times. It felt like life had cheated him of some great meet and greet. He sighed, head against the tree as he wondered idly if he could ask for a Kodak moment. 

He heard the familiar footsteps and smirked a little.

“You need a medic?”

He certainly wasn’t bored now.


	9. "That Others May Live."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again to the Rev Bang Mods, everyone in the slack who got me through #GSDs, and my fantastic artist, superhumandisasters.


End file.
